Democrat Sue Altman, who spent months trying to shed her far-left ideals, fell to Republican Rep. Tom Kean Jr. in her bid to flip New Jersey’s most contentious congressional district.
Kean led Altman by nearly 7 points with 93 percent of the vote reported when the Associated Press called the race just after midnight on Wednesday.
Altman spent her campaign flip-flopping away from far-left positions she pushed for years as the state director of the New Jersey chapter of the progressive Working Families Party. During her race, the Democrat opposed reparations while championing police and border enforcement—reversals from her previous stances.
For months, Altman avoided discussing reparations until she was asked about them during an October debate. “I don’t believe in reparations,” she replied.
But in 2021, Altman wrote that “a #reparations commission in NJ” was necessary. A year earlier, she said, “Equitable revenue distribution is a form of reparations—EXTREMELY valid.”
Altman also said in May she would “work with our police to ensure they have the resources they need to keep our communities safe.” Meanwhile, as a board member of South Jersey Women for Progressive Change, Altman oversaw workshops in 2018 that called on members to “imagine a society without police” and urged students to consider how to “overcome” their own privilege.
Other official 2018 platform policies of South Jersey Women for Progressive Change included “divesting in [sic] prisons,” “debt-free college” for “all students,” “protect[ing] our residents from deportation,” and access to health care “regardless … of ability to pay.”
In 2020, Altman advocated for illegal immigrants to receive taxpayer-funded COVID relief. And under her leadership, the New Jersey chapter of the Working Families Party posted that it would “not stop fighting until our NJ politicians take real action to shut down ICE.”
During the 2024 race, however, Altman called on Congress to fix the border, calling it “a crisis” and “a problem.”
While Altman spent months trying to distance herself from the Working Families Party, the far-left group spent over $735,000 supporting her campaign during the final weeks of the race. In the midst of the cash infusion, she complained she wasn’t getting enough help from the Democratic Party.
Altman also rallied with left-wing organizations like the Working Families Party and Make the Road NJ, groups that want to fast-track citizenship for illegal immigrants, defund the police, and ban all fracking and new oil and gas leasing, as well as drilling on federal land and waters.
